Return ticket

THE WAITING ROOM

Vainly you wish and vain are your desires

Ausiàs March

Is this the waiting room

for nothingness? For hell, perhaps?

Shall I never again - armchair despot that I am -

call that driver or my lame neighbour

a swine?

Shall I never again keep watch night and day

over my credit cards?

Shall I never again insert them in the slot

and achieve a modest monetary orgasm?

I have renounced this world and all its pomp,

and I'm moving in, they're carrying me, along the corridor

towards the past. What marvellous hell,

what mother of nothingness awaits me?

IF I DIE

Dido: By all that’s good, no more!

Nahum Tate

If I die, remember that what you see of me

is not what I am, however much it may remind you of that.

If I die, throw to the winds the dust

my name may raise.

When all's said and done I am the father of my children,

nothing more. But is anyone surprised that I should cry

Long live life! as long as sparks of love still fly

between us? I like to hear you laugh,

I like you in a cheerful mood.

Don't ever copy Dido! Not even Aeneas was worth it!

THE HAND STOPS

There are blows that fall in life, so heavy ... I don’t know!

César Vallejo

The hands stops, hesitates to write

these words that are medically correct.

The new and conscious terror covers me completely,

penetrates me, is the imminence of death,

always so near, always so remote,

like a court sentence ... with a possible pardon

in a surgeon’s hands. It changes me,

I change myself, become something gone in a moment:

I think of all that will no longer be, that I shall not be.

I don’t say a thing to my friends. Yes, my head is quite clear.

I want to forget everyone and not forget a soul.

NATURE IS COMING CLOSER

Lime trees, chestnuts, robins, magpies, crows,

the lethal fumes of Avonmouth, the Severn Bridge,

Abergavenny, Llanhamlach, the river Usk, the canal, sun

and clouds, the day is darkening, nature is coming closer,

is opening its tender sensual mouth. If I cease to be,

this earthy ‘I’ will swallow me lovingly down.

A LONG FAREWELL

Along the road to death I have looked for life

Ausiàs March

I think I have made a pact with destiny:

for myself I am everything, for the universe a corpuscle,

I would like those whom I have loved and love

to remember me in the embrace of a long farewell.

And life goes on.

I shall go to the operation stripped of everything

so that I can disappear or start again.

CUNNING

I keep silent.

I shall keep silent up to the last moment,

that last unpostponable moment

which is the silence that is me

which is the solitude that is me.

Then I shall have no need of cunning:

I shall find in that little lethal world

a completeness new and strange. That of the man who says:

“All I want is peace with myself

and let’s hope those close to me, who could be hurt,

do not resent it”,

and he says it in all innocence...

My cunning I bequeath to whoever wants

- as I did – to build invisible bridges.

Of course, if I get a reprieve....

THE OPERATING THEATRE

A wise doctor does not take the case lightly.

Ausiàs March

I wasn’t there

and they opened up my side.

I wasn’t there

and they cut bits out of me.

Shall I wake up some day?

Shall I see the scalpel, the solemn surgeon,

the lights, the apparatus, all those eyes?

Who asks me what I’m thinking?

I’m afraid of being there!

What luck I wasn’t!

TEMPUS FUGIT

Dolls’ faces are rosier, but these were children

Herbert Read

What has become of the children

who died in the Vietnam war?

Where are their hopes, their tender limbs

and those eyes of theirs staring at the lens?

What has become of the children

who died in the world war?

Someone – crime or punishment – blunted

their hunger and their coloured crayons.

What has become of the children

who died in the war in Spain?

Where are their toys that stopped working?

And their little sandals?

What has become of me?

What has become of you?

IT’S ALL THE SAME

In the beginning was the word.

The end is death,

which is waiting for us,

which may warn us that it’s coming,

which may come unexpectedly.

Some people contrive it.

Others connive at it.

We don’t want it.

There are some who desire it.

It’s only possible to ignore it

when we are idiots or senile.

I am trying to make a deal with it

even if I have to bring the date forward.

It’s all the same in the end.

Isn’t it?

SOLITUDE

The chief priests accused him of many things

St Mark

I walk alone through the world, always alone.

In my left side

nothing but water and blood.

The disease decreases, the wound grows larger.

We have abjured the powers of the Church,

the powers of the State.

In my left side

nothing but water and blood,

water and blood.

We walk alone through the world, always alone.

LIKE A BABY IN SWADDLING CLOTHES

It was indeed a blessing in our days

To have your kindness present in the world

Pere Serafí

They tell me I have been reborn,

they give me painkillers,

I am restricted to the basic functions

needed for survival. Miraculous hands

open and close the curtains,

wash my wounds, shake up my pillows,

keep watch over thousands of tubes

and the rhythm of my blood,

give me oxygen,

see that my buttocks never get sore,

feed me, comb my hair, tuck me up

and look at me – ah, how they look at me! –

with an age-old love

that I did not know existed,

with the love of one who is making a gift

of their own humanity

while performing a duty.

PAIN

Pain, which springs from nature itself

or perhaps from progress,

attacks us, becomes part of us

here, there, moderate, acute,

unbearable: is it man’s destiny?

Is the last moment a moment

of extreme pleasure or extreme pain?

And fear?

SISTER

Ah, sister, I will not make the great mistake

of daring to call you by your Christian name;

far be it from me to further anarchy

by offending against the strict regard for rank

which safeguards health in the city of the sick.

‘Sister’, with this most human of all titles

you mend men’s lives and treat it as routine,

always giving your love in the corners and spaces of life.

Look, though, at the Great Panjandrum in his fine fawn suit

- which suits his political future:

will he win through by counting the cash they pay you,

coin by coin,

and nibbling at the savings of the sick?

NOCTURN

A pallid light pervades the entire ward

and, here and there, you listen to coughing impromptus,

like abstract complaints to gods who ignore us,

whispers and light steps are heard:

no one is alone.

You smile, you survive,

you gently fall asleep.

Time goes by.

The pain returns,

they give you painkillers,

they give you their hand.

MY NAME

I couldn’t manage to make them

call me by my name,

not ‘Doctor’:

nothing deserves a doctorate more

than the way this sister acts and feels.

Not ‘Mr’ or ‘Señor’:

I own no slaves, no land, have no possessions.

I am just one human being among all human beings,

just one of so many lives surplus to warlords’ needs,

and you treat me as if I were an essential man

you save my life, you love me.

What more can I want?

TIME

From this time on, now that I have survived,

each second, each minute, each hour is a gift,

a succulent morsel of life.

Beforehand I prepared, went carefully over

my weakest subject,

the long panorama of my years

- free from feelings of guilt or the need for excuses,

my own or other people’s –

and repeated what is for me the cardinal rule,

perhaps mistaken, not always obeyed:

“never do harm to anyone”, remaining silent,

lying if need be, even when faced with the tunnel

from which I might or might not emerge

- Oh, Bristol pathways! fields of Wales!

the loneliest ones! Show me your beauty,

hide me!... –

but I have emerged, and now each second,

each minute, each hour is a gift:

I love those whom I loved,

some say nothing to me: only a few.

If I think of someone I can hear his reply.

AGGRESSIVENESS

I’m writing again...

Look at this paper, this pen!

No matter that I’ve lost a lung,

The longer I survive, the better advertisement I’ll be

for medical aggressiveness.

Let no one despise this medicine!

The only worrying thing is whether saving life

may lower the quality of death.

Today, though, I’m writing again

the prayer which thrills me.

NURSES

Like one who lulls by artifice

his body so that it may not suffer pain

Ausiàs March

Friend, dear friends,

is it true that it’s green, the anaesthetic they injected me with?

They make me into a thing, nothing,

they operate. I’ve woken up!

Friend, dear friends, you took me in your arms,

with all the tubes, cold and efficient, in place,

you lovingly laid me on the bed;

every hour almost, maybe every minute,

you come and see me and offer me

painkillers, water, food and warmth.

You are the generating mother of every solace,

prepared, with the strength of your lovely arms,

to cradle the infant whom, you remind me,

I still carry within myself.

All things considered, maybe I’ve been lucky.

WARD 4:FRENCH WINDOWS AT GARDEN LEVEL

My cell off Ward 4

has a French window at garden level

through which I could escape to Tierra del Fuego

- I have credit cards enough to get me there -.

And I have not escaped. I contemplate

from my bed, through the window panes,

three Scots pines, seagulls and rooks,

under a sky now blue, now grey.

I find the will to exist, make the wound mine,

and following the thread of pain, begin to hope.

I hope for everything. And you come in, my friend,

with your solicitous ways and a couple of questions:

“Was that your son, the boy who came to see you?”

“Would you like to change your position?”

I shan’t escape to Tierra del Fuego. I know you’ll come back,

and you do.

THE CHART

Hour by hour, day by day,

you come in, you who are one and are many

- as the poet from Roda would say –

you come to check my pulse,

my temperature, blood pressure, pain,

fantasies, love, fury...

You write it all down faithfully on the chart

and turn into watchfulness, patience,

conversation, smiles,

and you moisten my mouth with cotton wool

soaked in lemon juice.

Your writing, the lines you draw have more to say

than the works of clever authors

and no one’s aware of it,

and your actions penetrate to the depth of the soul

far more than the prohibitions of the Pope,

and you’re not aware of it and you wouldn’t believe it anyway.

I RANG THE BELL

It was in the night. Pain gripped my back,

breathing was hard and came in gasps.

I tried to change position, couldn’t make it.

I rang the bell.

You came in, with your blue dress and your cap,

checked all the tubes, gave me the oxygen mask...

We had to wait for the duty doctor

to come and give me the painkiller.

He was a long time coming. He was attending

to one patient after another

- there is no money to spare to lighten their work,

only enough and more for parasites - .

You stayed with me to wait for him,

with your blue dress, and your hand

which I can’t remember now, so strong and tender,

unforgettable.

MY SONS HAVE BEEN

They stand up tall, know what they want,

don’t realise if they’re being feckless,

do (but without letting on) what I tell them,

wear without modesty a halo of youth,

come one by one into my cell,

sit on the bed, the table, the chairs,

know that we grown-ups will be grown-ups,

that we have our caprices and infirmities,

and they show concern – it’s touching –

about my health. They would like to be listening now

to some pop music or a jazz concert.

They also know how to sit quietly and do things for me.

Maybe they are getting impatient, but they’re determined

to be with me and they stay with me:

despite the outlook let’s not get sentimental.

PEOPLE SUFFER

People suffer and don’t know why

Tarkovsky

Yes, man has violated nature.

Is silence the remedy for evil?

The wise eye, the heir of past wisdom, passes judgement.

We shall stay here. We shall move slowly.

Stripped of well-being

now we do know why we suffer.

The therapeutic wound stings.

Drugs, painkillers, the institution

is well organised:

I don’t complain in front of the nursing sister,

or my children, or you...

Silence is the single final remedy.

We suffer and we do know why,

neither heroes nor monsters: human, transient.

THE VISIT

You come from another world.

You bring me a little gift. We go through all the rituals

of word and deed:

“How well you’re looking!”

“You too,” I smile.

Yours is the rhythm of action,

mine the passiveness of waiting.

You programme yourself. I am programmed by others.

At the end of the day, though, we must never cease to be

the masters of ourselves,

whether you are stepping on the accelerator in the world outside

or they are injecting me, in here, with rat poison for the heart.

You leave. Full of goodwill and even sympathetic,

you love the air, the sky, you breathe in deeply.

THEY ENVY ME

And the flawless motion of the lovely body

Ausiàs March

When you come in they envy me.

The harmony of your profile and your smile

shines out. I descend the path of pain

and shorten distances. You examine the scar.

You shake your hair and show

the moistness of your eyes.

Do you realise that you are just at the start

and I on the other hand am getting ready for the final scene?

You offer me magazines, soap, peppermints,

would run all my errands.

Love is – and is not merely –

an intertwining of legs, a mingling of salivas.

I parcel up gifts of time: I offer them to you.

You smile, your profile stands out clear.

IT WILL ALL GO ON THE SAME

Whoever brands the dead as poor

says so with pain in his left side,

scratching the age-old hypocrisy

which will keep him going until he drops

on the morrow of your disappearance.

Yes, it will all go on just the same.

Don’t be angry, there’s nothing you can do about it:

count yourself lucky you won’t hear him when he says

“pobre Toni”, in Castilian.

Meanwhile, if you’re not there,

your love rolls backwards

to the beauty of the earliest word.

If you’re not there.

TESTAMENT

Friends, dear friends, if I die

do not allow destruction

and duplicity to rule.

I tried to show that love

could be lived by us all to the full:

I failed.

I tried to show that with very little

we could all live life to the full:

I failed.

I tried to show there was no need to be a criminal

in order to live a free and decent life:

they left me alone.

Do you realise? I have kept silent about many things.

If I die, friends, dear people,

there’s just one thing:

do not shut doors on one another,

stand firmly by whoever fails and keeps silent.

ON MY OWN TWO FEET

On my own two feet, walking in from the road,

I entered Frenchay hospital,

made up a parcel of time

and stuffed it into the corner cupboard.

Fear I put under my pillow.

I pulled off my mask and became anonymous.

Being superstitious, I didn’t look hope in the face

but opened my eyes wide like a halfwit.

With a shot of anaesthetic they closed them,

I have the sign here

- not from the gods, but from man –

that I did indeed live a few unrecorded hours.

It’s for this reason I would like to have closer knowledge

of the lives of my healers,

and of this male nurse who pushes the theatre trolleys...

Will they all fade away?

Bhatnagar who never looked at me,

Len who gently took blood from me

and later failed some exams,

Nicki who knew who García Márquez was,

Forrester-Wood, the healer-in-chief,

who had tasted Fundador brandy...?

On my own two feet I left.

Now I drink to the long life of this medical world,

exemplary, humane,

which often turns time into paper streamers.

Months will pass. I still remember them.

MUTILATION

Pain and fear are enough to destroy all virtues

Ausiàs March

Look at the great works of men, the inventions,

all are, have produced, produce and will produce

the mutilation of nature.

We shorten distances, we lengthen lives,

but destroy the mother, make her disintegrate,

we have multiplied ad infinitum the law that might is right.

And we go on bearing children,

stain the poisonous fog:

how many cubic feet per head?

GREETINGS, FRIENDS!

Resuscitation Training Centre

Friends, where are you?

Last night I dreamt about you. I was walking with you

down the barrack-like corridors at Frenchay.

Then we were sitting at a table and passed one another the pepper,

the ketchup and the HP sauce.

How’s your cough getting on? And the exercises?

Who brought you your morning cup of tea today?

Do they still squeak as much,

the wheels of the X-ray machine?

And the electric trolleys? Do they still

terrorise the corridors?

I can see the discreet arrivals of the paper-seller

and the flower lady and the librarian.

You must surely be hearing the firm, maternal voices

of the physiotherapists and some of the nurses,

and that whispering at night.

I believe in the resurrection of the flesh!

SUPERSTITION

We run away from life in order to run away from death

I thought I had nothing more to do in via,

all that I wanted to say in public

I had already revealed, I kept repeating,

and like a capricious god, instead of men

I was slaying woodlice

in front of thirteen luminous virgins.

I won my racing bets;

the bathrobe my mother gave me “to last a lifetime”

was worn out and I threw it away.

Then I went out and leaned over the fields

in search of shade.

Today, after an act of faith in man,

with my left side cut about

and the superstition dispelled,

I know that I shall still be stirring up trouble.

I SHALL HAVE TO PUT ON A MASK

And I used to say: let all that it has been our lot to live

be laid wide open: long live the Day of judgement!

We mustn’t hide from anything, I used to say.

Now, however, don’t ask me for what reason,

I suspect that I shall have to put on a mask,

just as we put a mask over wounds and pain.

LUNCH AT MASKREYS

Cuisine gastronomique

Today, the twentieth of February 1989

with a Mediterranean sun, a caressing breeze,

I climbed, not without effort, to lunch alone

on the top floor of Maskrey’s shop.

The delicious taste of cod with parsley sauce,

and, for dessert, a pavlova,

the view over the flat roof

and the nice people who, as if nothing was happening

- and nothing was - , were munching like me,

all convinced me that death does not exist,

how could it?

And I thought of the neglected ones who perish

and the helpless, and of those who make

a fat living out of playing at necrophilia.

STANDING ERECT

I write again the prayer of the fool:

“your spirit is the one that conquers me”,

here, standing erect,

ready for battle,

not the base military battle

which ends with honours

that hide and blot out horrors. No.

Ready, more than ever, for the battle

of life, of the ‘I’ with myself,

without the luxury of possibly flight.

Here, standing erect, an incurable optimist,

I shall defend a succession of lost causes:

universal love, an end to all discriminations,

the idea that parasites should give blood and earn their living,

that democrats should go and kill themselves,

that sensible people should abandon reason

and, instead of preaching against it, stamp out evil,

Here, standing erect, today, tomorrow, or whenever,

I, or perhaps my shadow!

And above all you!